Notes

Random ideas, hot takes, and quotes. Because the internet needs more of that.

Oct 24 2023

• Rough couple of weeks. There’s a certain purity that comes with stripping everything down because you literally cannot handle any more complexity than one thing in front of you.

• I’m on the last couple of rolls of Gold 200. We’ve driven all over and I’ve more or less stuck with the 28mm. I’m sure I’ll swing back to the 50 at some point.

Oct 17 2023

• Traveling like mad this week! Austin to Seattle to Kansas City, all in a car.

• Consolidated my two laptops into a single 16” M2 MacBook Pro. Apple silicon really is a significant improvement…if not in speed then definitely thermally.

• Trying out Arch Linux ARM on UTM on this laptop. So far so good.

Oct 10 2023

• Simplify, simplify. Leica M10-R, 50mm, 28mm. My brain immediately starts to figure out how to work around this “limitation”.

Oct 7 2023

• This is a really wonderful little interview.

Oct 5 2023

• “Everyone’s gotten really good at the same thing.”: which means it’s time to get good at something else. From.

Oct 3 2023

• I’ve been working on a Rails 7 codebase. Turbo is magic…but man it feels like that super complicated magic. And it papers over performance problems. Overall a fan, just don’t ever want to see how that sausage is made.

• I’ve been shooting through a 10 pack of Kodak Gold 200 with my M6 0.85 and a 50mm Summicron v4. Amazing combo! And peak hipster points. Really been enjoying carrying it around, regardless.

Sep 30 2023

• Tomorrow is Oct 1, 2024. What on earth.

Sep 28 2023

• Robotic vacuums: they’re just frustrated they can’t find the exit.

Sep 26 2023

Sep 19 2023

• We’re in Texas for a few weeks doing some dog sitting. I lived here for almost a decade in my 20s; I don’t remember it being this hot. Just miserable humidity. I think maybe I spent a lot more time inside in my 20s. I really want to go for a walk on a 55 degree morning.

• I’m using a Linux machine for a freelance gig. I’ve forgotten how much better Apple trackpads are than everything else out there. You don’t even notice it until you use the terrible ThinkPad one. Night and day.

Sep 18 2023

• Back to org-mode + org-capture. I use emacs with evil - vim movement reigns supreme - and have a simple system for capture. ‘,cl’ creates a log entry under an org datetree; ‘,ct’ creates a TODO at the current point. I have yet to find another note system that’s as neat and simple. I’m sure they exist, but this one is mine, yes?

Sep 16 2023

• The Leica M6 really is the sweet spot. I think my M3 is generally a better camera - especially for black and white - but it’s easy to see why the M6 is continually popular. They’re still hilariously overpriced.

• Spent an hour or so getting an old Arch Linux laptop up to speed for a work thing. I used to configure and tweak and spend hours getting it just so; I’m too old for that now, just give me something functional in a hurry. Maybe I’ll try a modern Fedora. It’s been at least two years since I’ve installed Linux on anything.

• This is really lovely.

Sep 13 2023

• I own a small stable of cameras. I use most of them on a rotation - some more than others. One of those is the Leica Q2, a camera with which I have a complicated relationship. I love almost everything about it…but I almost always want more reach than a 28mm can give. Which is a shame! I’d sell a lot of cameras to pay for a 40-ish mm Q camera. They could call it the Q3x.

Sep 11 2023

• I think what I like about film is that I get to relive the moment of a photo at some point in the future. It’s not “it slows me down”; it’s more like a nostalgia. Sometimes I don’t want that! But perhaps denying my brain the immediacy allows me to be more grateful for those moments.

• I picked up a Voigtlander 35mm Ultron v2 the other day. A used copy on Amazon, of all places. It feels very good on the M6; I have yet to try it on digital. I still think 35mm can be boring…but there’s a reason it’s one of the two (or three?) classic focal lengths on a rangefinder. I’m going to give it the college try for the next few months.

Sep 9 2023

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

• Douglas Adams

Sep 8 2023

At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: ‘I am called to man’s labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for? Is it for this that I am fashioned, to lie in bedclothes and keep myself warm?’ ‘But this is more pleasant.’ ‘Were you born then to please yourself; in fact for feeling, not for action? Can’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees each doing his own work, helping for their part to adjust a world? And then you refuse to do a man’s office and don’t make haste to do what is according to your own nature.’ ‘But a man needs rest as well.’ I agree, he does, yet Nature assigns limits to rest, as well as to eating and drinking, and you nevertheless go beyond her limits, beyond what is sufficient; in your actions only this is no longer so, there you keep inside what is in your power. The explanation is that you do not love your own self, else surely you would love both your nature and her purpose. But other men who love their own crafts wear themselves out in labours upon them, unwashed and unfed; while you hold your own nature in less honour than the smith his metal work, the dancer his art, the miser his coin, the lover of vainglory his fame. Yet they, when the passion is on them, refuse either to eat or to sleep sooner than refuse to advance the objects they care about, whereas you imagine acts of fellowship to bring a smaller return and to be deserving of less pains.

• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V